Because Apparently We Don't Think the Rest of the World Hates us Enough.

I know that times have changed, that terrorism has a new and more violent face.

But here's the deal. We like to say that we are a free nation, a nation of principles, a nation that is committed to democratic ideals. Democracy is based on the idea that each citizen, each person in a society, has worth and is entitled both to respresentation and a voice...hence the idea of one-person-one-vote....

Enshrining humiliarion into the way we do business spits in the face of our own ideals--it says that people are tools, that enemy foot soldiers are tools--that we can deny their personhood, treat them in ways that are sub-human in order to have our way...to protect our way of life...a way of life that, by its very nature, condemns the practices we would be using to preserve our way of life.

That kind of compromise of principle dooms any legitimacy we claim to have as a society.

Reality: War is bad...but in the world we live in, sadly sometimes necessary. Most people would rather not know what happens in a war...they would rather not know what is done in their name to protect their freedoms. By its nature, war can lead to an "ends justifies the means" way of thinking...and indeed, it has at many times in the past...and soldiers and civilians were gassed...and tortured....and burned alive...and made victims of all sorts of unspeakable acts. Eventually, we all saw that this was bad for humanity...for all of humanity. And so we entered into treaties...all agreeing not to do some of the things we used to do. The Geneva Conventions are one of the greatest achievments of the modern era because they established certain things as unjustifiable in ANY conflict.

Reality Two: The War on Terror is not a war against other nation states. In fact, it isn't a war at all. It is, and I know how much people will hate this term...a police action. It is an international effort to find, detain and punish what are essentially religiously motivated, violent, well-funded, organized crime figures. There is no "entity" on the other side that has to answer to international law or that has signed the Geneva Conventions.

This is the reason the current administration initially said it would not follow the conventions...because the folks "on the other side" aren't following them and don't have to. But by calling it a war, we get people all riled up on our side to "win" and to "defeat terror" (something that will NEVER happen by the use of force--I promise) so we like to call it a war even though, because it's not between nationstates or clearly identifiable groups. Having called it a war, we nevertheless don't want to play by the rules of war...we want to make up the rules as we go along. We want to call civilians involved in terrorist acts "enemy combatants" because under international law that gives us a lot of freedom to avoid nasty questions that attach in criminal law. But we don't want to grant them ALL the rights afforded enemy combatants because they aren't really soldiers of a nation state.

Do we see how circular this argument is?

To intentially and without Congressional approval set aside a provision of the Geneva Conventions (which I do believe would be a violation of the separation of powers doctrine--Congress having adopted the conventions giving them the force and effect of Federal Law), particularly one related to debasement and humiliation, is to declare ourselves once and for all...Supreme....above the law....

In psychological terms, it is to fall into a pattern of pathological narcicistic anti-social behavior...the belief that the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to us.

And it's just plain wrong.